page_title: Va'etchanan
section_title: Readings
hierarchical_section_title: Va'etchanan / Readings
caption_attribution_description: English: Woodcut for "Die Bibel in Bildern", 1860. Deutsch: Holzschnitt aus "Die Bibel in Bildern", 1860. Français&#160;: Gravure en bois pour «Die Bibel in Bildern», 1860. Português: Moisés ve a terra de canaã e morre. Dt. 32:49-50.
context_page_description: Va'etchanan is the 45th weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the second in the Book of Deuteronomy. It constitutes Deuteronomy 3:23–7:11. The parashah tells how Moses asked to see the Land of Israel, made arguments to obey the law, recounted setting up the Cities of Refuge, recited the Ten Commandments and the Shema, and gave instructions for the Israelites' conquest of the Land.
  The parashah is made up of 7,343 Hebrew letters, 1,878 Hebrew words, 122 verses, and 249 lines in a Torah Scroll. Jews in the Diaspora generally read it in late July or August.
  It is always read on the special Sabbath Shabbat Nachamu, the Sabbath immediately after Tisha B'Av. As the parashah describes how the Israelites would sin and be banished from the Land of Israel, Jews also read part of the parashah Deuteronomy 4:25–40 as the Torah reading for the morning prayer service on Tisha B'Av, which commemorates the destruction of both the First Temple and Second Temple in Jerusalem.
context_section_description: In traditional Sabbath Torah reading, the parashah is divided into seven readings, or עליות‎, aliyot. In the masoretic text of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), Parashah Va'etchanan has six "open portion" (פתוחה‎, petuchah) divisions (roughly equivalent to paragraphs, often abbreviated with the Hebrew letter פ‎ (peh)). Parashah Va'etchanan has several further subdivisions, called "closed portions" (סתומה‎, setumah) (abbreviated with the Hebrew letter ס‎ (samekh)) within the open portion (פתוחה‎, petuchah) divisions. The first open portion (פתוחה‎, petuchah) divides the first reading (עליות‎, aliyot). The second open portion (פתוחה‎, petuchah) goes from the middle of the first reading (עליה‎, aliyah) to the middle of the second reading (עליה‎, aliyah). The third open portion (פתוחה‎, petuchah) concludes the second reading (עליה‎, aliyah). The fourth open portion (פתוחה‎, petuchah) corresponds to the third reading. The fifth open portion (פתוחה‎, petuchah) spans the fourth and fifth readings (עליות‎, aliyot). And the sixth open portion (פתוחה‎, petuchah) spans the sixth and seventh readings (עליות‎, aliyot). Several closed portion (סתומה‎, setumah) divisions, notably one for every commandment, further divide the fourth and sixth readings (עליות‎, aliyot).
caption: Moses Views the Land of Israel (woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld from the 1860 Bible in Pictures)
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